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Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Mission 4 - The Winged Serpent

Well, missions from now on are just not going to be the same without Vargas, but the Helios squadron doesn't have much time to mourn her untimely demise. War is hell, ya know. Mission 4 starts with the usual chit chat amongst the Helios squadron and Admiral Durant. You get the pattern by now...Durant being an A-Hole, Copperhead his usual persnickety
self...

Copperhead questions why we are pursuing this frivolous side mission. Admiral Durant quickly puts Copperhead in his place and orders Helios to investigate.

Durant - impressive, getting your hands dirty

Copperhead being his normal sassy self after being told to investigate the canyon

Yeah yeah, we get it - pushing latrine orders for the next 20 years... etc, etc

Phase 1 Dogfight some Paladins:
You start with an engagement against 3 Paladin fighters that are led by a rather
disturbing looking trash talking individual by the name of “Winged Serpent”. Knocking out the Serpents 3 Paladin minions requires similar skills
as mission 2 – pretty straightforward
dogfighting.

3 Paladins show up looking for a scrap

Pleasant looking fellow

Phase 2 Canyon Country:After the
dogfight, the decision is made by our buddy Durant for Helios squadron to
escort 2 battleships thru a cool looking narrow harbor/canyon. As we
begin to proceed thru the canyon – surprise!
Mr psycho the Winged Serpent opens fire on us from a series of cool
looking pill boxes built along the canyon walls. The first 3 are down low on the right – once you
take them out, you continue to proceed thru the canyon and take out these pill
boxes as you encounter them. The pill
boxes vary from high up on the canyon walls to down low. Some shoot missiles, some shoot cannons. Overall, they are pretty easy to take
out. Kudos to Z2Live on the canyon
design – pretty cool.

Venturing into the canyon

SURPRISE ATTACK - Winged Serpent, you rascal!

Canyon cruising - take out the pill boxes!

You made it thru - now lets hit these 3 islands

Phase 3 Island Hopping: Once you
finish escorting your battleships thru the canyon, you break out into the open
and now see 3 islands with rotating radio dishes. Your mission here is to provide cover for the
battleships to allow them to lay the hurt on the radio dishes. To do this, your focus should be to take out
the ground cannons & ground missile units and also to be ready for aerial
attacks from additional Paladins that show up.
The main tip here is to not spend time shooting at the radio towers –
let the ships take care of them. Your
job is to protect the ships. Usually
there are 2 waves of Paladins that attack – they want to ignore you and go for
your ships, so your job is to divert and engage them and keep them from their
missile runs.

Protect the ships - don't worry about shooting the towers

Take out that ground support!!

This mission is overall one of the easier missions. The hard part for this mission is earning all
of the bonus’s. The bonus for avoiding
damage seems to be especially hard to get unless you know the secret. Thanks to some of the readers (comments below), the trick to getting the middle bonus (destroy all fighters without taking damage) is to avoid having your fighter hit by any missiles from the Paladins! The most critical portion to achieve this is in the fist phase of the mission. The Paladins in the last phase of the mission are more focused on shooting at your ships. Try this tip and hopefully you will score some free Lancers.

Earn 450 credits & some cannon ammo - middle bonus - not so easy

Bye bye Winged Mosquito - something tells me we'll be seeing you again in the future

34 comments:

Mission 4 is one of the easiest missions in my opinion, in order to get the Lancer missiles bonus the only thing you have to do is not get hit by a missile from an enemy plane, you CAN get hit from missiles from the surrounding SAM sites on the three islands. The way I do this mission (in the Hawken with stocks)... Obviously after gaining passage through the canyon is to fly left until your targeting reticule locks on the furthest left island SAM site, also as soon as you get a lock turn on full brakes, do this for each island. As soon as your reticule tells you that you have a targeting solution fire six missiles at the SAM site as fast as you can, then skip the radar tower and do the same thing for the other two SAM sites. Do this on each island and only stop when enemy planes have appeared, each enemy plane takes 6 missiles as well, once you have killed the planes return to attack the radar towers until the second wave of planes come,remember you CANNOT get hit by an enemy planes missile, attack the planes as soon as you can get a lock. Finish off the planes and finish off the radar sites. Voila you're done with all three bonuses.

To not get hit by those paladins missiles, u have to first hit each one of them with one missile or two to make them roll so they will break the lock on you. Then fire away like hell on every one of them.

First You Need The Hawken to get the Lancer missiles .When one of them has the red square shoot at them non stop.Do the same to all of them.After that, you probably will beat the mission and get the Lancer missiles.It's very easy until you get to the last part of the mission.My favorite part is at the beggining.

Part two of my comment back in Sept. You want to climb up and go to the right of the paladins and shoot only the lead and the one on the right in your perspective one missile only. You need to have the EAGLE X for its great lockrange. Then blow all the paladins to kingdom come with some dogfighting :)

I under stand but... Could I least know some off your stats?Mine: skill 9000Current plane: Red Widow/dragon1000 wins1300+ games Highest survival level reached: 28I had to get a new game center over Christmas because my stuff didn't transfer right on to my new iPod 4 do that's about a month and a half

getting the lancers missiles in this campaign is the easiest task , all you have to do is dodge the two missiles that are fired by the 3 paladin's in the first 30 seconds , usually it goes like this , with a hawken and stock missiles :

you head full throthle toward the 3 Paladinsyou get a lock on the first one ---> 2 missilesMissile Reload ---> Fire 2 more , 1st Paladin Downat that exact time you must pay attention , because either one of the paladin Fire his missile , or sometimes both of them ---> easy to dodge .

wheteher you get damage or not afterward is of no importance ,as long as you finish the campaign .the 2 waves of Paladins that attack the ships when they're hittin RAdios never shoot at the plane .....

Sousoucell you're correct that it is indeed easy but IT DOES matter whether you get damage before or later, it only matters that you do not get hit by enemy plane missiles, any other damage doesn't matter, also if you are using Side Winders(Stocks)it takes 6 hits with Side Winders to kill a Paladin not two even with a fully upgraded Hawken.

Folks you cannot get hit by ANY plane missiles throughout the ENTIRE mission, before or after the canyon. ANY other damage you sustain AS LONG AS it's not from a plane doesn't matter.

If you're having problems just follow my previous commentary on advancing through the mission.

for those of you who don't know the daily mission refreshes every 8 hours so you can potentially squeeze 30 - 45 lancers out of Z2 daily by playing this mission. I play the 4th and 5th missions daily to get those rewards.

It is quite simple:1) When you get out from the canyon, go full speed untill you are above the more advanced battleship and once there, break.2) Now you should lock on the SAMs, fire 5/6 missiles for each one of them in the first island (when you have to fire the last one/s, begin locking on the next SAM).3) Once defeated the first island go full speed at over 1000 alt and once you are above the second island begin firing as I mentioned above.4) Now do the same with the third island( I usually fly high only for the second island but you can do it for all of them).6) Now just take out the two waves of paladins.Hope I helped.

Yeah, 80% upgrsded but still didn't work so i just hid in the canyon taking sneak shots at the Paladins and waited for my battleships or destroyers to destroy them or I just use my Dragon. I forgot to put my name so i'm Anonymous.

I have over 1000 Apollo cannon ammo from playing this mission, and something like 150 Lancer missiles. I don't like the lancers much though, they're too unfair. Meteors from mission 5 are a bit better, but I usually prefer RAAMs.